As Red as Blood Bleeds
by Jezzabella202
Summary: I returned home to London to help my Aunt Wendy, she was only forty-five but my father John Darling worried over her deeply. You see she's mental, around the bend, off the deep end, and many more horrid phrases to label her with. It had been my tenth birthday when my aunt had asked my father a simple question and he responded with a simple answer that broke her heart;


**AN: Okay so this is a little information you may want to know including characters. This is set after whatever war is going on in disney's animated Return to Neverland. I say whatever war because i'm not sure if it's WW1 or WW2.**

 **OC (Her name's going to be a surprise! ;) )**

 **John**

 **Michael**

 **Michael's children**

 **John's wife**

 **Wendy**

 **Peter Pan(2003) (Lost boys; Nibs, Tootles, Slightly, Curly, Twin One and Twin Two.)**

 **Hook (Jason Isaacs/ 2003)**

 **Tinkerbelle (2003)**

 **Hook's crew (YES they ALL have names! And are as followed; Gentleman Starkey, Bill Jukes, Cecco, Cookson, Noodler, Skylights, Black Pirate, Alf Mason, Robert Mullins, George Scourie, Chas. Turley, Foggerty, Whibbles, Ed Teynte, Black Gilmour, Alan Herb, and Canary Robb.) For full info on them and much more Peter Pan stuff visit:**

 **{ wiki/Characters_of_Peter_Pan#The_Pirates }**

 **Jason Isaacs is the (close to) exact replica of what I imagined when my older brother read the J.M Barrie story to me, so of course I've always loved the 2003 movie. Sorry Disney animators your Capt. Hook is too scrawny and flamboyant for my taste**.

 _"John don't you remember when you were her age and we went to Neverland?"_

 _"Neverland?"_

 _"Don't you remember? Peter Pan, Captain Hook, TigerLily?" She said the last name in a flirtatious way, eyebrows raised._

 _"Oh Wendy! Those were just stories!"_

 _But to her they weren't they were real. As was Peter Pan, the only boy she would ever love; which is why she never married, and that's what started it all or at least I believe so. At least on that fateful night i learned to always keep the window open…._

 _"This use-to-be the nursery, I hope you don't mind, the actually guest bedroom is a mess, Michael was here with his sweet little children three days ago." My aunt told me as we stepped into a room._

 _"I don't mind at all." I told her stepping in and putting my suitcase next to the bed, i was thirteen. The room was simple; a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a vanity with a mirror, and a bed. The most special part of the room was the large window, in which to top half was stained glass, with window seat overlooking all of London. I never knew how my father, Aunt Wendy and Uncle Michael got to Neverland. My father had forbidden my aunt of speaking of it to me, my mother proclaimed that Aunt Wendy's silly stories were rotting my brain. "It's beautiful, I love this room!" I said smiling to her, she of course smiled back. Somewhere behind me Big Ben struck 12:30._

 _"Oh! It's far too late, You should get some rest, I'll make your favorite breakfast tomorrow. It is still blueberry pancakes?" She asked slyly._

 _"Yes yes!" I said excited._

 _"You haven't changed a day my beauty, perhaps you are forever youthful." I smiled; a real, happy smile, unlike any other smile i've had to produce since a very young age. Aunt Wendy smiled back a very similar smile, "Goodnight."_

 _"Goodnight Auntie." She shut the door with a quiet click and I flopped back on the bed, i fell asleep staring up at the blue cloud cover ceiling. When i opened my eyes later that night they met wild, mischievous greens._

 _"Good you're awake!" A blonde haired boy laughed. I sat up quickly, "The window was unlocked so I let myself in. Am I not clever?"_

 _"Shhh, don't wake my aunt." I whispered, "are you wearing leaves?!"_

 _"Wendy doesn't mind me, we're friends. HEY! You're not like those three ugly boys are you? They they threw toys at me and sent Tinkerbelle on a rampage."_

 _"Whose Tinkerbelle?"_

 _"My Faerie. She's not with me cause one of those boys almost broke her wing."_

 _"Do you mean Thomas, George, and Martin?" I asked._

 _"Yeah, those three!"_

 _"No, I hope i'm not like them."_

 _"Do you know any good stories?" He asked excitedly moving to lay flat on his stomach with his head supported in his hands and his arms bent at the elbow, I copied this then began._

 _"There once was a boy who lived on Baker street. One day he wandered far into the forest to escape his chores on the farm, there in he met a witch who promised to grant him three wishes if he found her a brown cow that produced chocolate milk, three pebbles from a poor man's shoe, and twelve silver coins from a dead richman's pocket…. Arthur pulled the sword from the stone becoming the one true king!...There was a brave woman, sad and a drift, she was the pirate's bri-"_

 _"NO! Nothing of pirates! I scorn them!"_

 _"Alright. There once was a mermaid...And our brave hero ran the dragon through with his sword saving the princess and rescuing her from her sleep with true love's kiss." I told him story after story until Big Ben chimed three times,_

 _"It's three o'clock, I've got to get back to Neverland." The boy said shooting into the air._

 _"You can fly!" The realization quickly came even though i heard very little about him, "You're Peter Pan!"_

 _"The one and only, I'll see you later! OH! Always keep the window open!" and with that he flew out said window. But as always in my life tragedy struck, mother grew sick, very sick so I returned home to Northampton shire. Where i grew older but as Wendy always said 'To grow old isn't to grow up.' I would not return to London until the next tragedy, the death of my Aunt Wendy. And that, sadly, my dear readers is where our story begins._

Late at night the day after the funeral I felt a strange pull to head back to Wendy's grave. I had yet to go to bed or even change into my night clothes. And I simply walked out onto the street barefooted. The promise of Michael's creepy twenty-one year old son coming tomorrow to help me 'take care of myself and the household.' until 'I find myself a man to marry and take on the responsibility of caring for me.' still hung in the air. The boy was retchet. I was twenty-seven the oldest out of this Darling generation; but i was not trusted by myself because I was, well, a woman.

"Jillian?! Where are you headed at this late hour?" My father asked coming out of the house. Never let it be said that i was unloved, perhaps my father and mother were stricter with me due to it but i was never unloved, my father and mother wanted a boy. They had been so wishing and praying for one that they hadn't the slightest clue what to name me once I had been born. Name me for my mother? Far too taboo. For my grandmother? It was the same as my mother's. For my father's mother? That was also, ironically, the same as my mother's. And so Auntie named me. Jillian. I loved it and most of all I loved the story behind it;

 _Redhanded Jill, the pirate's bride. She was a very rich merchant's daughter, Elizabeth Jillian Swann. She fell in love with a man who promised to take her away, for the girl never liked being spoiled. She didn't understand how elaborate dresses and pretty paintings and jewelry fit for a queen made up for her father being gone. Her mother had died giving birth to her, and being the last piece of her mother he held her close, squeezing the life from her. She wasn't allowed outside but five minutes a day so she wouldn't be come pale and sickly and even then she was in the back garden, surrounded by a seven foot fence with no gate. She wasn't to run or play due to tiring herself out or that she may fall and scrape her knees, even inside the house. The upstairs was off limits when her father was away at work and she had a second room down stairs next to her father's office. She wasn't allowed to eat to much because she might get an upset stomach, therefore she was given six small meals a day instead of three larger ones. She was to go to bed strictly at seven at night and rise at seven in the morning. Thankfully her father's spoiling of her left him low on money, money he needed during his travels and because of this she only had one caretaker, a slave from Barbados who believed her father's rules to be far too strict. She loved this woman deeply. She was a kind polite woman who let her help cook, she let her run and play whenever Elizabeth wanted wherever Elizabeth wanted! She could sleep in her room upstairs when only her and her caretaker there. The caretaker was a blessing of a woman and when she died and went to heaven God made her a special angel that watches over children and protects them throughout the night. Once Elizabeth had gotten older she was allowed out in the town, by her caretaker of course, her father would have a fit. That's where she met James.. They spent the days together in town and the townspeople knew her from the attention she drew laughing, walking along with James. Through this a Commander fell in love with her, even with believing her to be a poor peasant, and he was jealous of the relationship she had with James. Just as they planned to run away and get married, the Commander found out James' deepest secret, he was a pirate. A scallywag. He broke away from the prison where he was kept and came to her house knowing who she really was unlike the townspeople. He promised to come back. To steal her away, they would be together someday soon and he slipped into the night. But that wouldn't come true for the life of any pirate's bride is a sad one. James was caught stealing a ship, he was caught red handed. Even after her caretaker told her of this she refused to believe it, even after seeing his body swinging in the square. Her pirate was out there somewhere, alive. He wasn't there where his body swung back and forth in a hangman's noose. Everyday she'd stand on the shore. She'd dream of the happy life she had with him before, she was forced into marriage to the Commander by her father. Her father not understanding why his daughter was acting so glumly doted on her even more. One day he gave her a pretty maroon dress. It was too much for her. Reminded her to much of the red of the redwood ship her James had tried to escape on. She sliced to dress up and by the time she was done with it, it had become a captain's coat and the black under dress had become a poet's blouse. So by day she was Elizabeth the Commander's wife, quiet and shyly, and by night she was the brutal Redhanded Jill, the pirate's bride, robbing nearby ports with her gangly rotten crew. Never to be discovered as the other until she hung herself three years later with the same noose, in the middle of the town square, that killed her James. Her beautiful beautiful pirate. She did not hang herself as Elizabeth. She hung herself as Jill hoping that being Jill she would be sent to whatever awaited pirates in the world beyond worlds. She'd spend an eternity in Hell and damnation if it meant she could have one last second with James._

"I think I left something in the graveyard." I answered my father.

"Yes, your loony dead aunt! Now come back inside this instant!" He demanded banging his cane on the ground.

"I'm not a child." I told him calmly before walking away. His shout of;

"You may not be a child but you have much growing up to do," followed after. I rolled my eyes, I could go where I pleased when I please this was my life. What did he think happened while the war was still raging on. Wendy and I didn't wait for accompaniment to go for our rations! I pushed open the gate and stepped into the cemetery. Wendy was buried a ways in under a beautiful oak. I settled down on my knees in front of her grave.

"This is so unfair." I whispered to her tomb stone, "I won't forget the stories. Or how you cooked the best." I was in tears by then, "Or how you were the greatest mother i ever had, you were so much better then her. I wish I had been your daughter inste-" I stopped dead in my sentence. Bells. I just heard bells ringing. Not the ones of the church or clock tower. One's like Aunt Wendy would hang during Christmas. Suddenly a bag was over me and i was tied in it. "NO! Please somebody help me!?" The bells were ringing frantically now and whomever had stolen me was running. The bag bounced up and down with their every step. I started trying to pull at a loose thread so the bag would rip and I would be free. It did and we were over the ocean, but how? Suddenly I head what sounded like cannon fire but that was impossible! I was dropping. Down down down until I hit water. Salt invaded my nose and mouth filling my lungs.

A shout of, "CAP'N!" was muffled.

'Am I going to die?'


End file.
